X-Message-Number: 33215
From: "John de Rivaz" <>
Subject: The public perception of cryonics
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 11:37:48 -0000


I think that people know what cryonics is, and what is more they may even 
consider it to be a medical, rather than funerary, procedure. 


However they rely on their medical advisors for medical advice, and when that 
advice is to accept their eventual demise they take it. Many patients may not 
even ask their doctors, they will assume that their advice will be to follow the
herd into the fires of the crematorium, or to join the rotting corpses of the 
graveyard. If cryonics really was a sensible idea, surely everyone else would be
doing it. 


To the onlooker of a cremation or burial ceremony, the process is conducted in a
timely, well ordered, relaxing environment and with far more sympathy and 
understanding of the people involved than a hospital admission and discharge. 
The idea of friends and family rushing about stressing themselves to enable a 
cryopreservation that may not even work is nothing like as appealing. At the 
moment, anyone who has even glanced at the arrangements for cryopreservation 
must realise that it is a battle with powerful groups of people who would either
be outright against it, or at least disapproving of it.  


Doctors can persuade their patients to consult specialists after a routine test 
shows that something is wrong even if the patient is suffering no symptom. That 
specialist can persuade the patient to undergo tests and procedures that are 
both unpleasant and disabling to cure the condition that is showing no symptom. 
They use arguments that suggest that if it is not treated then the patient will 
show symptoms in the future and even die. Looked at like that, patients' faith 
in their doctors and surgeons is really quite amazing.


If motivated to do so, that same doctor and specialist could surely persuade 
patients to make cryonics arrangements, on the grounds that if they don't, 
eventually they will be annihilated. 


Religious hypotheses about an after life don't come into it, as they could 
equally apply to the aforementioned stressful period of medical tests followed 
by surgery, which could possibly be disabling .

--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

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